Hunting & Fishing
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, September 1993:
“We just don’t believe that
public safety is our responsibility,”
Coalition of Connecticut Sportsmen direc-
tor Robert Crook told a recent Connecticut
legislative hearing on whether hunting
license fees should be raised to support hir-
ing more wardens. The CCS is backed by
the National Rifle Association.
The Texas chapter of the NRA
is up in arms over a U.S. Forest Service
proposal to limit target shooting to the
safest 500 acres of the 20,309-acre Lyndon
Johnson National Grasslands. Incidents
involving use of firearms have increased
from 286 in fiscal 1990 to 510 in 1993.
The Coalition to Ban Pigeon
Shoots will protest this Labor Day outside
a private shoot at the prestigious
Powderbourne Gun Club in East
Greenville, Pennsylvania, rather than at
the simultaneous public shoot in Hegins.
There will be a small silent vigil at Hegins,
where large protests during the past two
years boosted shoot revenue by attracting
thousands of hecklers. (For details on the
Powderbourne demonstration, call Libby
Williams at 412-758-0720.)
Waterfowl deaths from ingest-
ing lead shot are down since the shot was
banned, but longer-flying steel shot maims
more birds, says the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service, which has now proposed
limiting shot size to restrict its range.
A Missouri bowhunter finally
told New York state police in July that in
September 1973 he and a hunting buddy
found the apparent remains of Douglas
Legg, 8, of Baldwinsville, New York,
who disappeared on July 10, 1971.
Fourteen bones were recovered from the
area on July 22. In the Navy in 1973, the
hunters feared they would be disciplined
for going too far from their base on leave.
The Town Board of Richland,
New York, has amended a bylaw to pre-
vent entrepreneur Kenneth Charles from
opening a 75-acre canned hunt for pigs,
sheep, and goats. A similar pig-and-deer-
canned hunt is to open October 1 on 700
acres owned by fallow deer rancher Josef
Von Kerckerink at nearby Chaumont.
“If we start going with morals
and ethics, we might as well put every-
thing away and let the anti-hunting
crowd take over,” Dan Heal of the
California Sportsmen Task Force told
reporters on August 6, after the state Fish
and Game Commission rejected Fish and
Game director Boyd Gibbons’ recommen-
dation that it ban bear hunting with dogs.
New York governor Mario
Cuomo on August 5 signed a bill to allow
the use of dogs to hunt “nuisance” bears,
after vetoing a bill that would have allowed
bear hunting for sport with dogs last year.
The new law permits the state Department
of Environmental Conservation to autho-
rize hunters to track bears with dogs each
summer, if the bears are not killed.
A joint Ohio house/senate com-
mittee in early July killed an amendment
to the state budget earlier adopted by the
house that would have given 25¢ per hunt-
ing license sold to the Wildlife
Conservation Fund of America, an arm of
the pro-hunting Wildlife Legislative Fund
of America. The amendment died after it
was altered to allow any conservation
groups including those opposed to hunting
to apply for the money thus raised.
According to NYDEC records
on their Young Pheasant Release program,
only 25% of the 12,000 pheasants to be
released at shooting sites this fall will be
killed by hunters, but fewer than a dozen
will survive the winter.
The Dallas Safari Club defended
trophy hunting at this year’s National
Federation for the Blind conference by pre-
senting a “Sensory Safari” for blind chil-
dren––a chance to touch 30 dead animals.
NASA has rejected the Ohio
Division of Wildlife’s request to hold a
deer hunt at the NASA Plum Brook facility
this year. Hunting at Plum Brook became
controversial in 1990 and 1991 due to
exposes in local papers by ANIMAL PEO-
PLE correspondent Donna Robb, who
charged that, “Nearly 20% of the total kill
at Plum Brook occurred after the hunters
left the woods,” as up to 250 wounded
deer went unrecovered.
